I've stayed out of this until now, because I don't think the problem is at all simple. Back in the 70s and 80s, we flattered ourselves that we saw off a far stronger and more overt attempt to install racism and social authoritarianism, by exposing them for what they were. But then we had a great deal of help from a then still strong Labour and Trades Union movement, who still knew what they stood for. And what they stood for was the interests of working people- of all ethnicities- and that the interests of the "indigenous" working class were no different from those of the "immigrant" working class.

The Labour party has since distanced itself from the tattered remnants of the Trades Unions, and concentrates on a technocratic approach to job creation and protection. Hazel Blears (I think) actually said that one of the good things about migrant workers was that they keep down wage demands from the indigenous workforce. This is rather a long way from the spirit of Clause 4.

In Langley Mill, Heanor, Blackburn, etc. ordinary people, know little of the "other" cultures that are now an integral part of British society, and often have little contact with them even when they live alongside them (they don't very much in Heanor), other than what they are told by the media, who use "bogus asylum seekers", "floods of Eastern Europeans", etc. as profitable marketing tools. They feel betrayed by the Labour Party, simply because they have been, so they are little inclined to listen to squeaky appeals for racial tolerance. Into the gap steps the BNP (note no geese this time round), and both the main parties are in fact quite happy to see this, as it might frighten their own dissidents back into line.

One of the results of the 1970s/80s struggles was a promotion of minority ethnic culture and a quite correct insistance that it was of equal value to indigenous cultures- especially as most indigenous people's culture was by then of a mass- market, consumerist, throw- away nature. But in their haste to acknowledge minority cultures, many cultural specialists felt it necessary to denigrate all indigenous cultures as somehow inherently tainted, even racist. So when Shirley Collins was involved in music in education in the South- Esat, she found herself frustrated in trying to promote traditional, local song in schools- it was seen as patronising and demeaning minorities. The people who saw it this way, note, weren't the kids- it was the educational authorities, who probably wouldn't have known a traditional song from the instructions on boil-in-the-bag rice.

I think one of WLD's frustrations is that he has been aware of this longer than most of us, who (speaking for myself) have been quite happy in my own little bubble of traditional Irish and British music, and not at all concerned how it relates to wider problems. Until, for example, a friend who knows little of folk went into a singing session on the fringe of a minor festival, and gradually noticed that those shanties mentioning "n*****" were sung with special frequency and gusto, and that "patriotic" themes were much in evidence. Hasty exit.

the developing economic crisis will certainly recruit many to extremism, and because of the fractured, sectional rather than class, view of society that has been deliberately developed, that is likely to mean racist groups (of which the BNP may prove one of the milder ones) for the whites, and jihadism, or whatever their background dictates, for non- whites. It's a bleak outlook, when you see what it brought about in Yugoslavia, which back in the 80s was an advanced industrialised society seen as a prime candidate for integration into Western Europe when the opportunity arose.

WLD is right, if we are to avoid disaster we need to work out ways of getting through the isolationist barriers. And the folks of Heanor might often be poorly educated and limited in outlook, but they aren't daft, and won't be patronised.